MICHEL ODENT COMMENTA "LA PRESTAZIONE"

Via a short and eloquent film, Gabriella Pacini is offering a key to understanding human nature in general, and human birth in particular. We all know that our species has developed to an extreme degree the ''new brain'', i.e. the neocortex, thanks to which we can constantly develop sophisticated ways to communicate, diversify and enlarge our scientific perspectives, increase our power through technological advances, etc. At first sight, our huge neocortex may be considered a tool at the service of vital functions. In fact, in some precise situations, this powerful tool can take control of such functions and obscure them. This is called ''neocortical inhibition''.

The concept of neocortical inhibition is familiar to specialised scientific circles. For example, it is familiar to physiologists studying the sense of smell: one of the effects of drinking wine (as a way to reduce neocortical control) is to make more acute human olfaction. It is familiar to those who study the capacity to swim and wonder why Homo sapiens is the only mammal that needs to learn to swim with voluntary movements: in fact very young human babies have perfectly coordinated swimming movements before a certain phase of neocortical development. This concept is also familiar to specialised medical circles. For example, psychiatrists know about the effects of a reduced neocortical control in some mental diseases. Urologists understand why they cannot evaluate the power of the urine flow in the daily life of a man through direct visual observation in a clinical environment.

Where sexual intercourse is concerned, the concept of neocortical inhibition belongs to the framework of empirical knowledge. It is not so when considering childbirth. This is why, at a time when most labouring women rely on medical assistance, we must be grateful to Gabriella Pacini for her capacity to reach an enlarged public through an appropriate analogical method. We must thank her for participating that way in the advent of a necessary paradigm shift, after thousands of years of socialisation of human parturition.